Burdens Shared
by Jade II
Summary: PostHero: After Saul leaves his quarters Bill has another visitor. AR


Bill Adama sat in his quarters, staring into the empty glass he held in his hand and contemplating a refill. It had only been his... fourth, maybe? Fourth glass of the evening, and after Saul's bombshell and subsequent near-breakdown Bill was not feeling nearly numb enough.

Ellen. Gods.

He had felt marginally better after the ceremony, his crew's grinning faces and congratulations proving Laura right about this being something they needed, but those recent memories were becoming fuzzy already with the alcohol. They were replaced by that old familiar feeling of guilt he had been carrying around with him since the attacks, now magnified by recent events from a lingering shadow in the back of his thoughts to a stark darkness still threatening to overwhelm them. Lee and Laura were right, of course, that only a share of the blame could really be his, but it was enough to be able to consume him if he let it.

Another knock at the hatch broke Bill's chain of thought. He stirred, stretching his legs and setting the empty glass down on the table in front of him. "Come in," he said.

Not Saul back again, please... he wasn't sure he could deal with that.

The click of her shoes stepping into his quarters announced the identity of his visitor even before Bill looked up. "How are you doing, Bill?" Laura asked, sealing the hatch behind her.

Bill considered this for a moment, watching her watching him. "I've been better," he said finally.

He could see her assessing him in the way her eyes crinkled and her jaw set as she joined him. She pulled up the chair Saul had vacated and sat down around the corner of the table from him, then settled with her chin resting in her hand and didn't say a word.

It took him less than half a minute to break. "Why are you looking at me like that?" he demanded.

"You're moping," she said.

"I am not _moping_," Bill replied, his feathers a little ruffled by this accusation – although why it should surprise him coming from Laura he didn't know. "I'm paying my penance," he told her, letting a glare flash in his eyes for a second.

Laura was unperturbed. "Good." She reached for Saul's glass, held it up to the light and, seemingly satisfied as to its relative cleanliness, poured herself a drink. "Mind if I join you?"

Bill raised an eyebrow. "What do you have to pay penance for?"

Laura laughed half-heartedly. "So many things, Bill, you should know that. I have a drawer in my desk full of things I should pay penance for." She sipped her drink. "Chiefly, at the moment, New Caprica."

Bill's eyebrow raised itself still farther. "Don't tell me you blame yourself for that mess. The responsibility for that one lies squarely on Baltar's shoulders."

She smiled. "Guilt isn't rational, Bill. That's another thing you should know, considering how you demonstrated it so well earlier today."

"And you tried to rationalize it away," Bill pointed out.

"You were about to do something stupid," Laura said. "You needed a kick up the backside."

Bill chuckled. Laura shook her head, still smiling.

"Everybody needs to indulge in guilt sometimes," she said. "But you can't let it control you."

"How is it that you do that so well?" Bill asked.

Her smile turned almost sad. "Practice. Which of course brings its own kind of guilt." She took another sip of her drink and sighed, staring into space.

Bill watched her. Her Presidential mask was still mostly in place, but what was starting to show through the cracks made his heart twinge in sympathy. She blinked, almost as if she were swallowing a tear; then she smiled again and turned her gaze back to him.

"So when was the last time you... indulged, Laura?" he enquired.

"It's been a while," she admitted, nodding. "We've been busy, as I'm sure you've noticed." She looked away, swirling the liquid in her glass.

"Mmhmm."

Laura's lips twitched and her smile faltered for a moment. She got it back in place, but not before a tear had escaped her eye. She swallowed, still staring into her drink.

"Hey..." Bill's heart lurched at the sight of her pain breaking through in this way, and at the memory of Saul sitting crying in the very same chair not an hour earlier. He pulled his chair around to sit closer to her and grasped her free hand in both of his, squeezing it gently.

Laura squeezed back harder, almost desperately, and turned to face him again as more tears spilled from her eyes. And Gods, she was still trying to smile...

Without thinking, he released one hand from her grasp and wrapped his arm around her to pull her into a hug. She let out a small sob into his shoulder; her tears trickled down his neck and he felt the backs of his own eyes starting to sting again. Lords of Kobol, what had he started? A sobbing session with the President of the Twelve Colonies hadn't been on his agenda today, he was sure.

But exactly that appeared to be happening. The harder Laura sobbed and clutched at him the more difficult he found it to keep his own tears from falling, until at last he just gave in and let them spill. Laura was crying loudly, but Bill wept silently. He wept for Bulldog, for the billions killed in the attack, for every person lost since; for Ellen and for Saul. He wept for Laura and he wept for himself... and after a while he stopped thinking about why he was crying and just let the tears come. Somehow they were almost comforting – a reassurance that his guilt was real and justified and that after everything he was still human.

Laura slowly calmed and stilled, and he felt her wet lashes brush against his neck as she squeezed her eyes shut. Bill sighed, feeling the sting in his eyes and the dried stains on his cheeks as his own tears started to ebb.

"How do things get so bad?" he said quietly, almost rhetorically.

"We let them build up," Laura replied, her face still buried in the fabric of his uniform. "Most of them don't seem so bad one at a time so we think we can push them aside, but eventually a really big one always comes up and brings them all back with it. 'I'll deal with it later' always seems like a good strategy until 'later' suddenly arrives." She looked up at him; her smile was back in place. "It wasn't quite so bad this time, though. Thank you, Bill."

Bill nodded. It seemed like the thing to do when one was being thanked. "Likewise," he said.

Laura's smile grew ever so slightly.

Bill began to smile back... but then he abruptly became conscious of just how entwined his body had become with that of the President. Her knees were between his legs, his arms around her back, her hands on his chest... It was all rather bordering on... intimate.

And Laura's smile seemed to be turning into a grin.

Something glinted in her eye, and with no more warning than that she leaned closer again and kissed him.

"Thank you, Bill," she repeated when she pulled away... and then pulled properly away, disentangling her legs from his and getting to her feet, smoothing her rumpled suit and then, with another smile, turning to leave.

Bill watched her. His mental facilities were experiencing a temporary meltdown of some kind.

She was almost at the hatch when his senses came back to him with a jolt and he scrambled to his feet.

"Laura," he said, slowing as she did, meeting her smile this time with a hesitant one of his own. "Wait."

**The End**


End file.
